8 Culinary Tricks for the Perfect Chicken

There is a reason why we marinate chicken. It is not just for the different flavors but also to retain the moisture of it. It is an extremely important step which many tend to skip. It is important that after marination, you seal the chicken in a zip-lock or a container and refrigerate for at least 3 to 4 hours. If you can keep it overnight, it would taste even better. This step proves to be fruitful especially when you want to make tandoori or grilled check. During the soaking time, the seasonings and the marinade mixture makes the chicken moist and keeps it soft and tender. It is imperative to use egg white or curd or olive oil in your marinades.

Chicken breasts and boneless pieces should be pounded ( a process wherein we beat the chicken to flatten it). This is great when we are looking at frying, grilling or roasting. This process basically breaks down the meat's fiber and helps in faster cooking and also keeps it moist.
There are 2 ways to flatten cutlets.
Recipes often advise pounding cutlets between sheets of plastic wrap, parchment, or waxed paper, all of which can easily rip or tear. Here are two alternative solutions that will keep your counters and your chicken safer.
A. Use the plastic bags from inside cereal boxes. Place cutlets of meat in the empty bags before pounding to shield the counter and cutting board from contamination. The cereal bags are sturdier than plastic wrap and less likely to tear.
B. Not a cereal fan? Try using flexible cutting mats. They won’t rip, and their sturdiness allows you to pound the meat into thinner, more uniform cutlets.

Keep an eye on your meat when you are cooking it. If in case you are not good at recognizing the cooked look, get a thermometer to check the temperature of your chicken. If you are making it for say about 90 seconds that too on both sides then leave it in the oven for 6 minutes at 356 °F.

It is said that the metal of the utensil in which you plan on cooking your chicken matters a lot as well. Not just that, the shape as well. If your pot is deep, the chicken remains moister and if it is a huge vessel, the dish experiences constant temperature and a tad bit increased pressure, which too works immensely on the moistness of it. In a shallow vessel, the chicken loses its moisture easily. Now the metal or the material also changes the flavor. Anything made in a clay pot would taste different from what we make in a non-stick.

Always let the chicken defrost and cook it when it is at room temperature. If you put the frozen chicken directly, it is dry and tasteless. Even if you want to marinate it, let it come on room temperature and then do it.

To turn chicken breasts into cutlets, hold a sharp chef’s knife parallel to the cutting surface and slice through the center of the breast horizontally. To keep your knife from skipping and tugging in the process, mist or rub the blade with water before cutting, which lubricates the knife and makes it slide easily through the meat.

Cutting raw chicken is a slippery proposition, especially if you’re halving chicken breasts to form thin cutlets. For a safer method, try the following approach: using tongs, hold a chicken breast that has been frozen for 15 minutes perpendicular to the cutting board. Cut through the chicken to make two even cutlets. In general, you can also give yourself a firmer grip on raw, thawed chicken by using a folded wad of paper towels to hold the meat in place as you cut.

Cutting slashes in chicken skin with a knife to help render fat during cooking is a slippery job that often results in the meat being scored as well, leading to a loss of juices and drying out the meat. Here’s a better way: pinch the chicken skin with one hand, then use kitchen shears in the other to snip the skin two or three times.